How to Outsource Your Social Media Strategy WITHOUT Sacrificing Quality

Social Media is one of the best ways to grow your online community. Having time to actually manage the social media yourself, on the other hand, is another matter entirely.

Every businessperson has other things to do besides worrying about constantly updating their social media feeds. While it’s important to do so, there are other things that they have to pay attention to.

That’s why hiring someone else to do the social media marketing for your business is such a good idea. Here’s how to go about it.

Know the Social Media 80/20 Rule

So, there are a ton of “rules” out there when it comes to social media, some good, and some bad. This rule has less to do with the actual social media, and more to do with how you manage your social media marketing. So, what is the 80/20 rule?

Focus your time on the 20 percent of the social media marketing process that matters most. Things like getting the correct content and making sure that it is distributed properly; focusing on the schedule, and more. Then delegate the 80 percent of the process that can be done by almost anybody.

In the sections that come next, we’re going to discuss how you can set up the process so that your social media guy (AKA the 80% dude) can go through every day and spread the content needed to grow your social media influence.

Step One – Set Up an Email To Collect Content

Your first step is to set up an email address, which can be the go to place for content. Your social media person should check this email on a set schedule, either daily or weekly. This email address will collect the emails you get from step number two.

When you set up the email address, set up something inconspicuous like social@yoururl.com. That way it is easy to remember, and has a proper label. Also, make sure both you and your social media person can access the account. That way if settings need to be changed, or you need to check on something, you can do so without asking for a password.

Step Two – Sign Up for Daily Content Emails And Have the Account Checked Daily

Once you’ve got an email address set up, your next step is to sign up for daily content deliveries. Almost every blog under the sun will allow you to subscribe to their daily or weekly email.

First, identify the blogs that are relevant to your business. These will be the ones that will do your social media marketing strategy the most good. If you sell tires, tweeting about hamburgers will probably do little for your end goal.

Once you’ve identified the blogs that produce the most relevant content, sign up for their daily or weekly emails. These will be delivered to the email you set up in Step One, and will be checked by your social media person on a regular basis.

If trust your social media person, choosing blogs to sign up for could be something you delegate to them. We recommend doing the initial search and signups yourself, so you know what content you’re starting out with. However, once you’ve set up a good number of blogs, your social media guru should be able to follow in your footsteps relatively easily.

Step Three – Search for More Content With Relevant Terms

The next step is to train your social media person to search for relative content that is not delivered to the email inbox. This can be a standard Google search (or Google News), a search on a site like topsy.com, or a search on some other specialty content aggregation site.

You want to train your social media person to do this because it will be time consuming (needs to be done at least once a day). This is definitely part of the 80 percent you should delegate.

Step Four – Use Buffer to Spread The Content

The last three steps were all about content collection, now we get to the part where the content goes out into your social media sphere. Your social media person should use a service called Buffer (or something similar) to distribute your content. This service has two benefits.

First, it can distribute content to multiple social networks, which means you don’t have to find a tool to use for every social network on the planet, which is nice. Second, it allows you to schedule your posts throughout the day. Buffer will automatically take the content your social media person adds to your buffer (think of it like a pool of content), and then will distribute it.

Your social media person should take the relevant content they get from the email address and from their daily searches and add it to the buffer. Then it will be automatically distributed to the social sphere on a set schedule. They should be in charge of making sure there is always relevant content in the buffer.

Final Step – Checking Their Work

For at least the first week or so, and then periodically after that, you should go in and make sure your social media person is doing everything as you want it to be done. Chances are they will make mistakes, so checking in on them will ensure those mistakes don’t turn disastrous for your social media plan.

If you find areas where they can improve, talk with them, and show them how you’d like it to be done. Give them an opportunity to learn the correct way for doing things.

Conclusion

Social Media Marketing has become one of the most important things a company can do to spread the word about their products and services. In order to have that success, your social media profiles have to be constantly maintained. Using the process above, you can outsource your social strategy, without sacrificing the quality you need in order to succeed.